Quotable Country – 01/06/13 Edition

January 6, 2013 by C.M. Wilcox

Welcome to 2013! I am officially sick of the old, generic Quotable Country graphic. Any ideas?

Click the bullet after each quote to visit the source.

Oh, he’s a lunatic! And he’s a sweetheart and I love the guy to death. If you sit down to write with him, whether there’s an idea established or not, you’re going to get a song written because he’s such a cheerleader. He makes a killer cheese sandwich, too. And he’s got the meanest dog alive. I’m shocked that anyone even goes to his house. ●– – The Departed’s Seth James on Trent Summar, who I’m still waiting on new music from.

First off, I think before a writer can write a great country song, I think he’s had to have lived. You have to know what you’re writing about. You have to have seen something happen. As far as me picking it, I’ve got to pick a song that people can relate to. I need to tell their life story. I need to tell some sort of happening in their life. I need to get their attention. If you’re telling someone’s life story, you’re gonna get their attention. I think as long as they can put their self in that position, they don’t have to see you on TV to feel that song. They know where it’s coming from. ●– – Gene Watson on what makes a great country song.

I remember working with Johnny Cash. I brought an old photo of him when he was skinny and greasy and working at Sun Records. He looked at the picture a long, long time, and I was starting to think I had upset him, and then he just said, “Damn, I was a good looking man.” He was. I have two pictures hanging in my house — my mom and that signed photo of Johnny Cash. ●– – Chris Isaak is super cool.

BM: I think the sound is great. The sound of two male voices is a tough sound. It’s not sweet. It’s tough. But I think maybe some of the songs guys don’t wanna sing, because it’s a lot of love songs. Two guys singing a love song is a little weird, you know? Maybe that’s one reason. But we don’t care.
JL: Yeah, we don’t care what people think. … Let ‘em talk. It might sell more records. ●– – Buddy Miller and Jim Lauderdale on their duets record, Buddy & Jim.

When you look at the three of us you’d think, “Oh those guys were just slapped together. They manufactured the beautiful supermodel girl, the multiracial guy, the all-American spiky-haired boy …” But the truth is we got together writing songs. It’s organic. It started with the songs and as we started writing, we found ironically enough that our three voices fit together in a way you can’t manufacture. ●– – Nick Hoffman is aware of what The Farm must look like… aaand he’s right.

I like passion in voices. I like passion in music. And I find that sometimes with today’s music, it’s just so perfect – it’s that high fidelity and all of the auto-tuning and all that stuff. It’s too perfect for my ears. A lot of people love that and it’s good for them. But for me, I just love the way it was when a bunch of guys went into the studio and they’re playing everything at the same time and it was all analog. If you messed up, it was a big deal. ●– – Lindi Ortega.

For us folkies, and maybe this [is] arrogant, but I think a lot of people are rubbed the wrong way by bands like Mumford and Sons. I think they’re people who are somewhat exploiting certain forms of music rather than honing it in and evolving from it. I think it’s more like dipping in the well and snatching and grabbing. ●– – Pokey LaFarge.

He says a typical month of the show’s expenditures include about $200,000 on cast/crew housing, $80,000 on catering, $45,000 on vehicle rental and $55,000 for fuel. He put camera equipment rental figures at approximately $1.6 million for the season and says about $460,000 per episode goes to local vendors. ●– – “Nashville” the show is big business for Nashville the town.

We decided maybe if we could find somebody that, you know, is good-looking… and we fell short on that goal. So we started over, set the bar a little bit lower and finally thought, ‘Man, you know, if we can just get somebody that can read.’ This is Country Music and that’s narrowing the field down. ●– – Blake Shelton on the hunt for an ACM co-host to fill the vacancy left by Reba.

Question: When I think of country music, I think of one singer: Loretta Lynn. Is that her real name? I know she was born in an unusual town. What was it? How old was she when she got married? How long did her marriage last?
U.D., Odessa, Texas ●– – Things I don’t understand in 2013: People still writing in to newspaper columnists for answers that could as easily be found on Wikipedia.

Russell Crowe singing Slaid Cleaves’ “One Good Year.” Did not know this existed.

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Comments

I’ve been trying for a while to put my finger on what bothers me about Mumford and Sons, and the Pokey LaFarge quote is as good an answer as any. I have nothing against the Avett Brothers, though.

And (unabashedly Canadian excitement warning) hey, it’s Alan Doyle singing with Russell Crowe! I didn’t even know Russell Crowe made music until he co-wrote for Great Big Sea’s recent albums and Doyle’s solo one, but I’ve enjoyed most of his contributions to those. As big as Great Big Sea’s gotten, I still get surprised/excited to see the guy from what I remember as a small Newfoundland band singing with someone like Crowe. It’s a good song, too.

I’m not a big Mumford fan or anything – seems like they pretty much just do that one cool, epic song over and over again – but I’ve been finding the backlash against them kind of weird. Especially because before they became popular, critics and musicians alike were all abuzz about the coolness of Sigh No More. Yes, Mumford is a pretty simplistic band with one magic formula, but it’s a formula nobody had really thought of (or at least perfected) before them. And it’s pop, and it’s supposed to be. They owe more to U2 and maybe 70’s folk-rock than to the old-time folk tradition – and that’s ok. If it gets that instrumentation back into the mainstream, are we really going to complain?